


Unwanted

by azriona



Series: Unexpected [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha Natasha, Alpha Phil Coulson, Alpha/Omega, Angst, Discussion of Abortion, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Clint Barton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5969029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azriona/pseuds/azriona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would have been just Clint’s luck if he’d decided to tell Phil about the baby right before Loki came in to fuck it all up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwanted

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to nautilicious for the beta, but especially thanks to everyone who commented on the first story asking for more. 
> 
> **Trigger Warning:** Trigger warning for thoughts/consideration of abortion, in what could be considered a fairly violent form. The thought is fleeting and brief, and I can absolutely assure you that _it will not happen_ , in either this story or any other in this 'Verse, but Clint does consider it and I want to make sure those who need the trigger warning get it.

It would have been just Clint’s luck if he’d decided to tell Phil about the baby right before Loki came in to fuck it all up.

It would be pretty and romantic, and the sort of thing that only heightens the dramatic nature of the story. 

It would also be wrong.

Clint hadn’t decided anything at all.

*

It’s only a couple of days since Thor took Loki back to whatever stupid alternate dimension they’re from, and Clint wakes up in the middle of a panic attack.

He’s not even sure _why_ he’s panicking – only that he can’t breathe, and his heart is pounding and there’s a weight in his gut that is dragging him underwater.  Nothing smells right, nothing _feels_ right.  The yellow lights of New York at night shines through the window at the wrong angle, illuminating the ceiling instead of the floor and opposite wall, as if Clint’s much higher than he should be in the stupid third-floor apartment he rents on the West Side.

He can’t hear the continuous traffic of New York at night, either.  There’s a too-damned-familiar voice ringing in his ears, so clear and perfect in a way that he hasn’t heard voices in such a long time. 

Okay, scratch that.  Clint knows _exactly_ why the fuck he’s panicking.  He hates the voice and misses its clarity in equal measures.

His chest hurts, his muscles are shaking, his entire body is soaked in sweat but he’s shivering so hard he can barely push away the covers that are suffocating him.  Belatedly he realizes that he’s in Stark Tower – that explains the angle of the light, the lack of city noise.  He’s cocooned by sheets washed in Tony’s stupidly expensive laundry soap that doesn’t actually smell like anything.  Clint misses the cheap shit that he always bought because why the hell would you spend money on that kind of thing, even if the cheap shit always made his nose itch?  Phil always makes fun of him—

_Fuck_.

At least with the cheap shit, Clint wouldn’t have been able to smell anything else.  The only favor Tony’s detergent does for Clint is to give him space to remember what the bed had smelled like when Phil had been in it, and that’s not doing Clint any favors at all.

If Phil were here…

But he’s fucking _not_ , and Clint doesn’t want the memory.  It hurts too much.

The baby is a couple dozen cells in his uterus, each one as heavy as a blacksmith’s anvil.  They weigh him down, drag him under water, closing over his head.  All he can hear is the rushing through his ears, a constant static of background noise that is determined to override everything else.

It does.  Clint couldn’t ignore it if he tried, and he scratches at his ears, trying to dislodge the hearing aids he’s forgotten that he’s not wearing.  The static is louder even than that voice, that _goddamn fucking crystal-clear logical voice_ that he only hears now when he’s dreaming, and can’t ever quite shake when he’s awake. 

It’s the stupid cells forming inside him; that’s what makes the voice stick.  As alien as the being who put the voice in his head in the first place.  He has to cut them out, he has to get rid of them.  Find a knife in the kitchen and dig until the thing inside that’s eating him alive is gone. 

It’s the only way to be _safe_.

He’s halfway to his door when it opens, and the light from the hall spills into the room.  Natasha’s shadow stretches across the carpet where Clint is crawling on his hands and knees.

“Clint,” she says, or he thinks she says, because he can’t hear her, even though he sees her mouth moving.  The water around him ripples as she moves, and then she’s there, the deep alpha scent of her skin, the sharp acrid scent of her hair, the faint scent of cotton and dryer sheets from her pajamas. 

It’s familiar.  It’s comforting.  Two things Clint is craving so badly he doesn’t even stop to think about what he’s doing; he just shoves his nose into her neck.

Natasha goes stiff; they’ve never been like _this_ , he was with Phil already by the time he and Nat could have started anything.  Not that they’d ever have wanted it anyway – but the familiarity of her scent is far better than the antiseptic, metal smell of his room with only him in it.

And maybe the alpha pheromones can calm his breathing, slow his heart rate, make his skin stop shaking.

It doesn’t work.  His stomach rolls, and he can barely turn away before he is sick on the floor.

“Shit,” said Natasha, absolutely disgusted and dismayed and Clint wants to die, but Natasha just pulls him away from the mess and pulls his sodden shirt from his body in a swift, rough movement.  He’s cold in the room, shivering, before she drags the damned comforter from the bed and wraps him up tight. 

Natasha crouches in front of him, hands holding his shoulders steady, and she waits to speak until he’s looking at her.  “I’ll be back, just… _breathe_ , okay?”

“Can’t,” chokes Clint.

“ _Breathe, you asshole_ ,” growls Natasha, all bossy alpha, and Clint sucks in a lungful of air.  It almost helps. 

By the time she’s come back with a cool, wet cloth, his breaths are less erratic.  The water rushing his ears, filling his lungs, has receded.  He’s left with the dull static of every day, the drum of Nat’s feet on the carpet.

Loki’s voice is relegated to memory, along with Phil’s scent.  Ying and yang.

Natasha hands him the cloth, and sits next to him. 

“It’s gonna kill me,” says Clint, dully, staring at the cloth in his hands. 

“Maybe,” says Nat.  Her voice is faint, strange, fluid without the hearing aids.  The only reason he knows what she says is because he knows _her_.  It almost doesn’t matter if he can hear her or not.  Her hand is on his back, pressing lightly on his spine between his shoulder blades.  It’s a center, of a sorts; Clint concentrates on it, on the feel of her fingers (one two three four five), of the flatness of her palm (the c-shape of it, the even way it presses against his skin).  Of her own breathing, soft and steady, and he tries to match it.

Nat would bring him the knife, if she thought it was a good idea. 

“I think you should know why, before you do it,” says Nat.

“It’s killing me, isn’t that enough?”

“ _What’s_ killing you, Clint?” asks Nat gently.  “Guilt, for letting Loki in?  Or because you didn’t get a chance to tell Phil before he died?”

“Fuck you, Nat,” says Clint, but there’s no force or emotion behind it, and Nat’s hand doesn’t move or change pressure.  He wonders how much it would take before she backs away, and is almost inclined to try.

Probably a lot.  Probably not worth it.

“I wasn’t going to tell him,” says Clint.  “Not yet.  Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You need to tell Fury.”

Clint snorts.  “No.”

“Clint—“

“ _No_.”

“All right,” says Nat. 

“No one gets to know,” says Clint.  “ _No one_ , Nat.”

“Your choice,” says Nat, and her hand is still on his back.  It’s not the hand he wants on his back, but the weights inside his body are drawn to it anyway.  They aren’t dragging him down anymore. 

They hold him steady.

“Don’t move your hand,” says Clint.

“I won’t,” she promises, and she doesn’t.


End file.
